


Suburban Mating Call: A Separation in the Life

by Lbilover



Series: Suburban Mating Call Series [5]
Category: The Lord of the Rings RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Romantic Comedy, Humor, M/M, Romantic Comedy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-14
Updated: 2017-09-14
Packaged: 2018-12-29 20:05:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12092436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lbilover/pseuds/Lbilover
Summary: While Elijah is out of town for a week, he and Sean participate in an unusual experiment.





	Suburban Mating Call: A Separation in the Life

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written in 2009 for a friend's birthday. Mutsugoto was a real thing (I don't believe it exists anymore, alas...)

Sean eases the Lexus into the curb, parks it and hits the release for the trunk. He leaves the engine running and turns on the emergency flashers. The airport police will ticket him if he leaves the car to go inside with Elijah, so they will have to make their goodbyes here. He unclips his seatbelt and gets out of the car with dragging footsteps while Elijah does the same from the passenger seat.

It’s only for a week, he tells himself. Elijah will only be gone for a week. But a week without his angelic ex-garbageman already seems an eternity, and what if something happens to Elijah while he is in Edinburgh? He could be kidnapped or murdered or become ill or fall madly in love with some artist or musician at the Fringe Festival and never come home again.

“Sean.” Elijah joins him at the rear of the car. “Sweetie, everything’s going to be just fine. Trust me.” He puts his arms around Sean and hugs him so tightly that Sean can hardly breathe. Tears fill his eyes and he wants to beg Elijah not to go, but that would be silly. Elijah is a record producer now, and part of his job is to go scouting for new bands for his label. It’s only for a week, he tells himself again.

They separate reluctantly, and as Elijah hoists his suitcase out of the trunk, Sean says, “You have your passport?”

Elijah doesn’t flinch even though Sean has asked him this same question a thousand times since they left the house for LAX. He pats the breast pocket of his plaid button-down. “It’s right here.”

“Your hand sanitizer, antioxidants, grapeseed extract and echinacea?”

Elijah pats his messenger bag.

“What about your Chionizer?”

Elijah lifts the black strap around his neck to show the small air-purifying device that Sean has given him.

“And your surgical mask?”

Elijah sighs. “Sean, do I really have to wear a surgical mask on the plane? I’ll look like such a dork. Besides, isn’t that what the Chionizer is for?”

“Elijah, do you have any idea how many germs are floating around inside an airplane?”

“A lot. I know.”

“You can’t take too many precautions. I couldn’t stand it if you ended up catching a virus and were sick thousands of miles away from home where I couldn’t be with you.” Just the thought makes Sean want to snatch Elijah up, put him back in the car, and speed away (well, not speed exactly, as it would never do to exceed the posted limit, especially at an airport).

“All right, I’ll wear it,” Elijah says, but he is fiddling with the handle of his suitcase-on-wheels as he’s speaking, and Sean suspects he’s only saying that to appease him. He supposes what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him, and Elijah is wearing the Chionizer after all, and has faithfully promised not to use the airline provided pillows or blankets, to disinfect his armrests and tray table before touching them, and under no circumstances to turn on the air nozzle and aim all that germ-laden re-circulated air at his face. That will simply have to suffice.

Sean closes the trunk while Elijah lifts his smallish suitcase onto the curb. Elijah has packed ridiculously few clothes for the trip, according to Sean’s standards, without so much as a single suit, only the hallowed tan corduroy jacket and tie he’d worn on their first date, and no dress shoes, only scuffed brown boots. (His attempts to get Elijah to dress more smartly have been an abysmal failure; not only does Elijah resist them, but Sean himself can’t really put his heart into anything that would lead to Elijah’s pale bony kneecaps being hidden from view.)

“Well, I guess I better go check in,” Elijah says.

“Yes, you better,” Sean replies, trying to be brave, like Rick as he watched Ilsa walk off with Victor at the end of _Casablanca_ (although Rick ended up with Louis, which was, in Sean’s opinion, a pretty fair trade). “With all that traffic, we only made it here three hours early.”

Elijah bites his lip, obviously nearly overcome with emotion at their impending separation.

If this were a movie, Sean thinks, music would now start playing, swelling up dramatically, the sort of music that tells you right away that something tragic is about to occur. In his mind, he and Elijah represent every pair of star-crossed lovers who have ever parted at a train station, possibly forever. He can hear the train’s mournful whistle, the hiss of steam, the conductor’s voice shouting, “All a _board_!”

“Seanie?” Elijah interrupts his literal train of thought. “Wherever you are right now, that’s not us.”

Elijah knows him so well.

“I promise you, I’ll be home in one week. A week’s not all that long, now is it?” Too bad Elijah looks about as convinced of his own words as Sean—which is to say, not at all. “Oh Sean.” His arms go around Sean’s neck in a stranglehold. 

Sean, of course, can’t keep from talking, even at a moment like this.

“When you get to Edinburgh, what are you going to do minimize jetlag?”

_kisskisskiss_

“Walk around barefoot to ground my electromagnetic system.”

_kisskisskiss_

“And then?”

_kisskisskiss_

“Stand in the sun for 15 minutes without sunglasses.”

_kisskisskiss_

“And then?”

_kisskisskiss_

“Drink lots of water.”

_kisskisskiss_

“And then?”

_kisskisskiss_

“Take a walk.”

_kisskisskiss_

“And then?”

_kisskisskiss_

“Take a long shower to rehydrate my body.”

_kisskisskiss_

“In case you forget any of the steps, call me, or read the instructions, okay? I printed out a copy, and put it in your suitcase. Oh, and I emailed it to you, too, just to be on the safe side.”

_kisskisskiss_

“Seanie?”

_kisskisskiss_

“Yes?”

_kisskisskiss_

“Shut up and give me a proper goodbye kiss.”

So Sean does. It’s a world-class effort, entirely worthy of a farewell scene set in a railway station (or anywhere else for that matter), and (had he been in any condition to notice) garners them considerable attention from passers-by, one of whom says pointedly, “Geez, get a room, would you?”

Sean doesn’t hear him, having more important matters on his mind (not to mention in his arms), like Elijah’s firm body and hungry mouth. This turns out to be a blessing, really, because when Elijah finally tears himself away with a choked-up “I love you”, Sean is too dazed to object or beg Elijah not to go after all. Elijah turns outside the automatic doors to the terminal, waves bravely, and then disappears inside. Sean just stands there, lightning-struck and stupefied, until a police officer snaps, “No loitering, buddy.” That galvanizes him into action; he gets back in the Lexus—so empty and incomplete without Elijah in the passenger seat—and eases away from the curb.

Before he’s reached the airport exit, his cell phone rings. He pulls over and answers it. “Hello?”

“I miss you,” Elijah says.

“Oh Elijah, I miss you, too,” Sean replies.

“I dunno, Sean. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

A little thrill courses through Sean. He loves those (admittedly rare) opportunities when he gets to be the strong one. “Now Elijah, you know you have to go. It’s important for you to hear new bands, and besides, don’t forget the Mutsugoto experiment we volunteered for.”

“Fuck the experiment, Seanie.”

Sean is inclined to agree, but he says, “We can’t do that to them. We made a promise, Elijah. A promise.”

Elijah’s sigh is the mournfullest sound Sean has ever heard. “Yes, we did. And I really do want to check out that band ‘Nails on a Blackboard’. They might be perfect for my label.”

Having heard a demo CD of ‘Nails on a Blackboard’, Sean has concluded that one, Elijah’s budding music label might not survive the signing of the group, and two, no band has _ever_ been so aptly named. Nevertheless, as Elijah’s boyfriend, it’s his duty to support him, so he only says, “They very well might be. So you see? You have to go to Scotland. And it’s only for a week, after all.”

“Oh Sean, what would I do without you? I love you.”

“I love you, too, Elijah.”

They say goodbye and hang up, and Sean cautiously edges out into the stream of traffic. Barely 30 seconds’ later, the opening notes of ‘You Are My Sunshine’ sound again. He stops.

“Hello?”

“If the plane crashes and I die, it’s okay if you want to find someone else. I won’t mind.”

“Elijah!” Sean is horrified. “The plane isn’t going to crash and you aren’t going to die.” 

He speaks with remarkable calm, considering he’s on the verge of hyperventilating at the very thought of an Elijah-less life. Find someone else? God only made one Elijah, adding a heaping tablespoon of angelic hotness to his batter that was left out of the muffin tins for the remainder of humanity. 

“Now stop thinking like that right this very instant, okay?” adds the man who started thinking exactly like that the very instant Elijah first brought up the idea of going to Edinburgh, and he realized that due to his wine club’s upcoming election (not to mention his paranoia about every single aspect of flying, and his dark suspicions about foreign food, water, hotels and restrooms) he wouldn’t be able to go with him. 

But Sean’s imaginings have run in quite a different direction from Elijah’s. Far from picturing himself finding someone else, he has already mentally acted out his rapid decline and demise (despite the pitiful pleas of family and friends not to follow Elijah into the hereafter so soon), and his blissful reunion at the Pearly Gates with his beloved, who has refused to enter Heaven without Sean.

“Okay. But I think it’s important you know how I feel, just in case.”

“Well, now I know, and we aren’t going to discuss it anymore,” Sean says firmly. “I love you, Elijah.”

“Love you, too, Seanie.”

They hang up, and Sean barely gets back onto the exit road when his cell phone rings a third time. For a moment, he’s actually tempted to answer it while he continues to drive. But only for a moment.

He pulls over. “Hello?”

“You’ll call me the instant the election is over, right?”

“I will, I promise.”

“You better win,” Elijah says darkly, “or I’m going to be seriously pissed. No one deserves to be president of that wine club more than you do, sweetie.”

Sean practically melts into a puddle of sticky goo all over the leather seat at this evidence of Elijah’s faith in him, but at the same time, he can’t help but feel a _smidgen_ of relief that Elijah will be on another continent during the election. Relations between his boyfriend and the wine club members are still rocky, stemming not only from the ‘tastes like cat piss’ comment, but also the wine tasting Sean had hosted at their house a few months earlier. 

A disparaging comment about the wine selection, over which Sean had slaved and agonized for weeks, had been made within Elijah’s hearing, with predictable results. While it couldn’t be categorically proven that Elijah had tripped on purpose and dashed an entire glass of Riesling in the face of the club member who had dared to criticize Sean, no one was really in any doubt. Elijah’s patently insincere apology had been uttered with a feral expression that would have done justice to a saber-tooth tigress protecting her young. 

“If I don’t win, it won’t be the end of the world,” lies Sean, who has lusted after the club’s presidency for as long as he can remember.

“Oh Sean, you’re so brave.” Elijah heaves a heartfelt sigh, and then he says worriedly, “Promise me you won’t go falling in love with someone else while I’m gone.”

“Elijah, I’m about as likely to fall in love with someone else as I am to… to…” Sean tries to come up with a comparison that will convince Elijah of his sincerity, “buy sheets that aren’t 1500 thread count 100% Egyptian cotton.”

Elijah giggles. “That’s my Seanie,” he says, sounding relieved. “I love you.”

“Love you, too,” Sean replies, and they hang up.

Sean doesn’t even get the Lexus in gear before the phone rings yet another time. “Baby,” he says softly, “imagine how fantastic the sex will be when you get home. I bet we won’t even make it out of the foyer, we’ll just tear each other’s clothes off and...”

“Sean, this is your mother,” interrupts Sean’s mother. “I think you better stop right there.”

~~~

Sean slowly undresses, folding his clothes with his usual painstaking precision and setting them on the dresser. The bedroom is neat as a pin again: the cream-colored carpet fibers all point in the same direction, the throw pillows are all neatly arranged against the headboard, and the toiletries are all lined up like little soldiers on the antique rosewood dressing table. 

It had seemed respectful to return the bedroom to its former, pre-Elijah state of fussy perfection, what with Elijah occupying a specially equipped hotel room in Edinburgh for the Mutsugoto experiment, a room furnished with red silk organza bed curtains and red satin comforter. The very name, Mutsugoto (or Pillow Talk, as it was loosely translated for Sean and Elijah) smacks of Japanese tea ceremonies and Zen gardens, not a suburban Californian bedroom that looks as if it’s being shared by Pigpen and the Tasmanian Devil.

To his surprise, Sean has no sooner cleaned up Elijah’s scattered possessions than he misses tripping over, stepping on and (after he’s done hopping in pain and swearing) picking them up. He’s discovered that even if he _could_ convince Elijah to put things away (a hopeless cause thus far), he wouldn’t. He can’t return to the former, pre-Elijah Sean, with his perfectly ordered life and a ‘place for everything and everything in its place’. More importantly, he doesn’t want to. 

He’s run naked in the rain and embraced a tree. He’s free. (Well, for the most part; being in charge of cleaning Boots’s litter box while Elijah is away proves that maybe there are still some lingering Chaos issues going on).

Speaking of Boots, their adored cat is currently occupying her favorite spot on ‘her’ easy chair, front paws tucked tidily under her white bib while she watches him with a wide unblinking stare as he undresses. She has been watching him with a wide unblinking stare ever since Elijah went to Edinburgh. Before he left, Elijah had instructed Boots, in a solemn and serious voice, to keep an eye on Sean and not let anything happen to him while he was gone. 

Sean is already secretly convinced that Boots is the smartest cat in the history of the world (as well as the cutest and most adorable, of course, and he’s prepared to fight anyone who would say otherwise, for no cat has _ever_ had such cute white paws or such an adorable squashed-in nose), and this confirms it. Boots has taken Elijah’s words to heart with a vengeance, and over the first three dismal Elijah-less days, or to be precise the first two dismal Elijah-less days, 19 dismal Elijah-less hours and 10 dismal Elijah-less minutes (not that Sean is counting), she has been Sean’s constant shadow. 

Much as Sean appreciates her concern, however, that wide unblinking stare is more than slightly unnerving to one of his naturally paranoid disposition, and has resulted in an even higher than normal level of self-consciousness. He’s lost track of the number of times he’s glanced down to check that his fly is zipped or examined his teeth in the mirror to be certain there is no food stuck between them.

But he had finally crumbled that morning when he went into the bathroom and Boots trotted after him and jumped onto the vanity counter. She had assumed a sitting position, and fixed her large greenish eyes on Sean just as he was preparing to pee. 

“Boots!” he’d exclaimed. “Can’t a guy have a little privacy?”

Boots had gravely considered his request. Then, apparently having decided that Sean could at least be trusted to relieve himself without supervision, she had left him to it. He’d apologized later (after all, she is watching him out of love for Elijah, and, he hopes, for him, too, although he sometimes recognizes in Boots’s eyes when she looks at their angelic ex-garbageman, the same besotted expression that he is certain he displays) and she had graciously accepted his apology, along with an extra can of her favorite _Gourmet Salmon and Shrimp Feast_. 

Now, that unblinking stare tracks Sean like a police officer with a radar gun as he moves around the room, shutting the blinds and drawing the curtains against the sunny afternoon. He moves next to the bedside table and hits a button on the combination alarm clock/white noise machine; the soothing murmur of gentle rainfall begins. In the months since Elijah moved in, Sean hasn’t required the services of the once-essential white noise machine, but he wants no outside distractions to disturb the Zen-like Mutsugoto atmosphere of peace, harmony and tranquility, and Elijah’s soft breathing and steadily beating heart, which normally spell peace, harmony and tranquility to Sean, are currently residing in Scotland. Imitation rain, therefore, will have to do its poor best as a substitute.

Sean checks the clock. 12:55 p.m. It’s nearly time for the experiment to begin. He stares at the high-tech camera mounted high on the wall above the headboard, its lens pointing at the center of the bed with the same unblinking intensity that Boots possesses, and wonders, a little uneasily, exactly what he and Elijah have gotten themselves into with this Mutsugoto project. 

_”Seanie, look at this,” Elijah said, draping his arms around Sean’s neck from behind, and holding several pages of computer printouts in front of him. “’Couples in long distance relationships are being sought to try out a prototype device designed to communicate intimacy from their bedrooms’,” Elijah read aloud. “’The device allows couples, who are separated by distance, to draw in light on each other’s bodies or beds. Volunteers will be sought at the Edinburgh Arts Festival in August.’ Doesn’t that sound brilliant? It’s totally made for us! We definitely have to volunteer.”_

_“Elijah, I don’t know,” Sean replied doubtfully. “Drawing in light on each other’s bodies sounds very bizarre. Sort of like being felt up by a ghost.”_

_“No, it’s not. Listen.” Elijah read on, “‘Mutsugoto is an intimate communication device placed in the bedroom environment. Instead of exchanging e-mail or SMS messages using generic interfaces in business-like venues, Mutsugoto allows distant partners to communicate through the language of touch as expressed on the canvas of the human body.’” He sighed against Sean’s neck, a shivery, delightfully warm, distracting sigh, and softly repeated, ‘the language of touch as expressed on the canvas of the human body’. Isn’t that beautiful, Sean?”_

_Sean had to admit that it was, especially as he was the lucky guy who had the world’s most beautiful human canvas to draw on, but his native caution, which no amount of naked tree hugging in the rain could eradicate, not to mention his training as an accountant and his rampant fears for Elijah’s safety, wouldn’t allow him to commit to anything without thoroughly investigating it first and reading all the fine print._

_“We’ll see, Elijah,” he said. “I want to know more about these Mutsugoto people and what is involved before I’ll agree.”_

_“But Se-an…” Elijah began in the wheedling tone that generally reduced him to a state of mindless acquiescence._

_In matters that concerned Elijah’s safety, however, Sean was immune to wheedling. “I won’t risk anything happening to you,” he said firmly._

_Elijah subsided, but said, “I’m sure it will all check out just fine, and there won’t be a single thing for you to worry about, sweetie.”_

_Which was, of course, patently absurd, as there was **always** something for Sean to worry about. But then Elijah swiveled Sean’s computer chair around, climbed onto his lap, said, “Fuck, I love it when you go all decisive on me, Sean,” and started kissing him. And for the present, Sean had not one single, solitary worry in the whole wide world._

In the end, as there didn’t appear to be anything dangerous involved that might result in a lawsuit or (far worse) an injury to Elijah, and drawing on one’s partner with light appeared to be sanitary, hypoallergenic and non-permanent (unlike tattoos), Sean had agreed that they should volunteer. Elijah had bounced off excitedly to his computer to contact the Mutsugoto developers and offer him and Sean up as guinea pigs, and bounced back some hours later to give Sean the good news—they were in.

“Fuck, this is going to be so much fun!” he’d enthused, his eyes sparkling. “What are you going to draw on my body, Sean?”

“I have no idea,” Sean had replied. “You know I’m not very imaginative, Elijah.”

Elijah had choked, and started coughing. 

“Are you all right?” Sean had exclaimed, his blood running cold as he pictured Elijah collapsing to the ground and having to be rushed to the hospital for an emergency tracheotomy. “Did something go down the wrong way? Do you need me to do the Heimlich maneuver?” He moved around behind Elijah, prepared to grasp him firmly under the ribcage and dislodge whatever was blocking his airway, but Elijah had held out a hand to ward him off, and said, “I’m fine, sweetie. Really. It’s just… Sean, you have the most…erm…well-developed imagination of anyone I’ve ever known.”

“Not according to Charles,” Sean had said gloomily. “He called me provincial.”

A frightening change had come over Elijah then, similar to how he’d looked uttering his insincere apology to the wine club member who had insulted Sean. Only more so. A lot more so.

“Charles,” snarled Elijah, in full saber-tooth tigress mode, “is a fucking pretentious _asshole_ who didn’t deserve you.”

To say that Elijah doesn’t like Charles is the understatement of the millennium—both the current and all former millennia. Sometimes Sean wonders whether he ought ever to have told Elijah about his former beau. Unlike Sean, who, if he met Elijah’s previous boyfriend, would fervently thank him for having been born a baseball fanatic, Elijah has no such kindly impulses toward Charles for having been born a pretentious asshole who gave Sean’s mother dead flowers (although as a method of bonding Elijah and Sean’s mother, Charles has turned out to be a glue without peer, one that Sean suspects NASA would snap up in an instant). 

In fact, Sean has occasional nightmares in which Charles’s lifeless body, a black cloth draped over it as it sits on a rusted bicycle, is discovered in one of the Refuse King’s landfills, a sign propped against it reading: _Corpse with Garbage and Bicycle_ : Installation by E. Wood. 

(Discreet inquiries have revealed that Charles is actually living in Paris with his new lover Raoul, a fact which comforts Sean greatly. It isn’t that he gives a rat’s ass about Charles anymore, but he has no desire to visit Elijah in prison, no matter how angelically hot he is likely to look in an orange jumpsuit.)

Elijah had then gone on to challenge Sean to disprove Charles’s claim of provincialism, and on the whole, Sean thought he had succeeded rather well.

~~~

But now that the Mutsugoto experiment is ready to begin, Sean is starting to have second thoughts. There is something distinctly unsettling about having a camera’s lens pointed at the bed when one is naked and agonizingly aware of the fact. (No matter how many times Elijah assures Sean that he’s hotter than George Clooney, the closeted gay emergency room doctor, as Sean persists in thinking of him, Sean still finds it difficult not to look behind him for the sexy stud he’s certain Elijah is describing.) 

Intellectually, Sean is aware that no one can see him standing beside the bedside table with his privates dangling in full view (other than Boots that is, but she can hardly be counted as she’s seen the view innumerable times and has always appeared indifferent), that the camera is only a means for the infrared rings he and Elijah will wear during the experiment to interact with the computer vision system. Yet he can’t shake the irrational conviction that somewhere in Edinburgh, the inventors of the device will be watching him draw in light on his naked body and laughing themselves sick. 

He largely blames his paranoia on Charles, who had fancied himself a master of cinéma vérité, and loved playing around with a video camera, filming people at all sorts of horribly embarrassing times, and thinking nothing of ordering perfect strangers about as he did so. Though he has no proof that Charles ever videotaped the two of them having sex, Sean has a persistent dread that one day an acquaintance will email him with the evidence. It is the source of his irrational fear of Youtube.

Of course, there is a camera trained on Elijah, too, in that specially designed hotel bedroom, but no one could possibly laugh at angelic (not to mention insanely hot) perfection, writhing naked on a bed while being painted with lines of light. 

And there is yet another vexing problem, Sean thinks. What if, despite all assurances to the contrary, they _are_ watching? How can they possibly fail to fall madly in love with Elijah’s writhing naked perfection? What if they won’t let him return home, but take him prisoner and force him into a life of Mutsugoto slavery?

(Sean’s cheeks—fore and aft, not to mention everywhere in between—heat up as he realizes that the mental image of Elijah naked, tied to a bed, and writhing, is insanely hot and incredibly arousing, but he comforts himself that _any_ mental image of Elijah naked is insanely hot and incredibly arousing. It doesn’t mean he’s a perv. Does it? And what would Elijah think about being tied up, anyway? Sean has never proposed bondage, as black leather, chains, and handcuffs have always seemed so incredibly tacky and over the top, but maybe, on second thought...)

_Oh god_. Sean covers his face with his hands. Elijah is right. His imagination _is_ well-developed. Very, very, very well-developed. One might even say _over_ -developed. Just like a certain portion of his anatomy that thinks bondage combined with naked, writhing Elijah is the best idea ever and is anxious to get started on it.

But the purpose of Mutsugoto (or so the developers hope) is for him and Elijah to share an intimacy deeper and more profound than any afforded by the usual email, texting or cell phone calls. _Together_. The guys running the project couldn’t have been any nicer when they came to install the equipment and demonstrate how it worked. Nor could they have been any straighter. Or looked less like white slavers. 

Oh, if only he could get past the nagging sensation that he’s the victim of some giant cosmic mistake, and that God, after sending angelic perfection into his life in the form of an insanely hot, if totally inept, garbageman, will realize that he’s sent said garbageman to the wrong person, and snatch Elijah away. What better opportunity than now, when Elijah is thousands of miles (5165 to be precise—Sean googled it) away in Edinburgh? 

And oh, if only Elijah hadn’t sounded so happy (but blessedly jet-lag free; he’d assured Sean that he’d followed his instructions to the letter, and that the policeman who’d questioned him outside the airport terminal had been very understanding when he explained why he was removing his Chucks) when he called Sean after the ‘Nails on a Blackboard’ gig last night. He’d ecstatically reported that the band was even better than he’d hoped, and that he’d already talked to them about signing with his label. All of which was excellent news, of course (if baffling considering that Sean would prefer to listen to actual nails on a blackboard if given a choice) but Elijah had then gone on, fatally, to mention how good-looking the lead singer was under all his tattoos, and Sean was plunged forthwith into a typical morass of self-doubt and worry.

“Of course he can’t hold a candle to _you_ , Seanie,” Elijah had quickly added, realizing his mistake, but the psychic damage, had, alas, been done. Sean doesn’t sport a single tattoo. Has Elijah been secretly wishing he did? If so, where would he want Sean to have his tattoo? On his shoulder? His ass? His dick? Did the lead singer for ‘Nails on a Blackboard’ have tattoos on his dick? Sean had wondered. Well, if that was what it took to keep Elijah, he’d do it, Sean had decided, resisting the urge to clamp his hands over his crotch, the way the jerk in the multiplex restroom had when Elijah described (with a graphic relish that still made Sean queasy) some guy’s privates rotting off from flesh-eating disease. 

Only ever since he made that brave resolution, he’s been praying fervently that it won’t prove necessary, considering that he still hasn’t gotten up the nerve to get his ear pierced after the humiliating incident at The Piercing Pagoda, and he is, when it comes to physical pain (and pretty much everything else), a wimp with a capital ‘W’.

Sean turns off the bedside lamp, and the room is now dark save for the soft silhouette of light projected onto the bed by the Mutsugoto camera. He is well aware that he’s being a paranoid idiot, as usual, and that Elijah has done nothing over the months since they’ve been together but demonstrate his love for Sean in every conceivable way (not to mention in every conceivable place and in any number of positions that seemed to defy both gravity and space), but he is unable to stop, especially without Elijah’s reassuring presence, and calmly spoken, ‘Relax, sweetie. Everything’s going to be just fine. Trust me.’ What if, when it comes down to it, Sean _can’t perform_ , and he ruins the experiment, just as he ruined a high school performance of _Camelot_ by accidentally stepping on Guinevere’s train and tearing her dress off because he was busy ogling Lancelot’s ass? What if Elijah has bailed on the experiment because he and Mr. Tattooed Dick are out having a beer and some chevrefeuille? What if—

And then, before the car wreck of Sean’s imagination can careen any more out of control, Sean’s eyes rivet to the olive-striped duvet covering the thick down-filled comforter, and relief floods his soul. A vivid blue-white line has appeared as if out of nowhere. Elijah hasn’t bailed. 5165 miles away, right this very moment, he’s lying on a hotel room bed, enclosed by red silk organza curtains, drawing with light on his own body—his very own _naked_ body. 

Sean stares mesmerized at the ghostly silhouette on the duvet and the slowly moving white line. Twinkling dots of lavender, pink and powder blue cluster at the top of the line, indicating where Elijah’s hand is moving; Sean half-expects to see a body coalesce out of those twinkling dots. If only life was like a science fiction story and teleportation actually existed. Elijah could beam back to their bedroom, have wild monkey sex with Sean (there’s a good reason they’ve chosen ‘Simian’ for the name of Elijah’s record label), and return all flushed and satiated to Edinburgh, where he would give Mr. Tattooed Dick a smug smile and… 

“Oh shit!” Sean yelps, and dives for the ring that sits waiting on the edge of the comforter. He’s forgetting that he has a part to play in this experiment, too. Elijah will be wondering where the hell he is. 

Unfortunately, he completely flubs his dive, bounces off the mattress, and hits the carpet with a thud that has undoubtedly gotten the attention of the folks running the Earthquake Hazards Program, so that a small square will appear on the map of recent California earthquakes that Sean scrutinizes online every day, with his house as the epicenter.

“Yowww!” Sean’s funny bone smacks smartly against the table leg and his eyes start to water. “Ohhhhhh,” he moans, clutching his throbbing left elbow. There’s a loud _crash_ as the table lamp falls to the floor, and the white noise machine hiccoughs.

A daintier, non-Richter-scale-registering thud precedes the arrival of Boots, who jumps down from her chair and trots over to investigate the latest calamity.

“Meow?” she inquires.

“I’m all right,” Sean grits out, his entire body hot with embarrassment. At least the lights are off in case anyone _is_ watching.

Boots looks dubious, which is understandable, Sean thinks, given with whom she’s dealing and what has just happened. 

“Really, I’m fine, Boots,” Sean reassures her, sitting up. His funny bone doesn’t agree, and Sean wonders why on earth it’s called a funny bone when the very last thing he feels like doing at the moment is laughing. Someone ought to be sued, he decides. Exactly who, he has no idea, but-- 

Out of the corner of his watering eye, he catches a movement. “Oh shit!” he yelps again, and thrusts out his right hand just as the Mutsugoto ring, which has been teetering on the edge of the mattress, falls off. He catches it on his middle finger, which is a miracle considering that with his luck, it should have hit the floor and broken, so that he would have had to live with the humiliation of not only ruining the experiment, but breaking a rather expensive piece of prototype infrared equipment into the bargain.

The moment the ring slides over his finger, Sean doesn’t (as he half wishes he could) disappear like poor Frodo Baggins in _The Lord of the Rings_ ; instead, the touch-activated infrared pulses to life, glowing with an eerie red radiance.

It’s performance time. Sean gets to his feet, the nervous churning of his stomach driving out the pain of his abused elbow.

_Relax, sweetie. Everything’s going to be just fine. Trust me._

Sean can almost hear the soothing tones of Elijah’s beloved voice. He takes a deep breath, and climbs onto the bed, which is now crisscrossed with lines that Elijah has drawn while Sean has been doing his best imitation of a tectonic plate. _Okay_ , he tells himself, _you are going to put all that out of your mind. You are a Zen master, completely calm and in control._

He tries unsuccessfully not to think about the meditation class that he had once signed up for on the advice of several colleagues, who seemed to think he could benefit from it. It had been a total fiasco. The more the instructor had encouraged them to focus on their breathing to the exclusion of all else, and allow distracting thoughts to sink like sediment after churning seas have calmed, the more convinced Sean had become that his breathing was dangerously erratic and abnormal, and a succession of dire scenarios involving paramedics and emergency lung surgery had arisen from the still-murky waters of his imagination, with the end result that he’d hyperventilated and passed out. (Something, the instructor had informed him with a most un-Zen-like lack of calm, which had never before happened in his class. Or anyone else’s that he could think of.)

Banishing the hideous memory from his mind, Sean crawls into the middle of the bed, so that he is centered over the silhouette being projected by the camera. Then he carefully lies down in approximately the same position that Elijah is lying in his distant Edinburgh hotel room. Though there is no noticeable warmth, Sean has the oddest sensation of heat, as if Elijah had lain there before him and the covers still bear the imprint of his angelically hot body. It is a surprisingly intimate sensation, as are the sensations created by the crisscrossing lines of light, lines that now fall onto Sean, showing the places Elijah has traced on his body. Sean’s skin seems to tingle wherever the lines touch—and they are touching all sorts of places particularly susceptible to tingling. 

Elijah has wasted no time getting to it. 

Sean grins. Maybe getting felt up by a ghost has its pluses after all, he decides as the line of light, wobbling slightly, travels across his stomach, preceded by that cluster of twinkling lavender, pink and blue dots. If the ghost is Elijah, that is.

But will Elijah feel the tingle, too? Sean imagines how he would touch Elijah if he were really there on the bed with him, imagines how that angelically silky satin skin would feel beneath his palm. Tentatively, he strokes his right hand along his upper arm, leaving a trail of white light in his wake. Almost immediately, the twinkling dots race like a scatter of shooting stars across his chest to meet the stroke of his ring. 

As the two white lines meet, his and Elijah’s, they shimmer and change color, turning heart’s blood red. They’d been told this would happen, that their lines would interact with each other when they touched—‘reflecting their synchrony’ as the developers dryly put it—but the reality is not in the least dry, but very, very erotic. Sean’s imagination proves to be far from provincial (take _that_ Charles, he fleetingly thinks) as he continues to move his hand over his body, and Elijah follows him, their lines meeting and parting and meeting again, going from white to red and back again. They draw loops and curlicues and zigzags, until Sean’s body is covered in intricate patterns of light, like some futuristic tribal ritual. 

Tension builds inside Sean as the tingling increases with every stroke of light and with every mental image of Elijah panting and squirming under his ghost-touch. Before long, both white lines have moved to the source of their respective aches, and begin a slow, sensuous spiral up and down that gradually increases in pace.

Sean’s eyelids fall closed, and he moans Elijah’s name. He doesn’t even need to see the white line to ‘feel’ Elijah’s touch. He has in fact achieved that state of total Zen that he’d hoped for. Fuck meditation. Mutsugoto is the Way.

The first pat on his nearly-ready-to-explode dick doesn’t even faze him. He’s so in the Mutsugoto zone now, it seems like part of the experience, a very pleasurable part of the experience. The second pat is more of a swat, really, and hard enough to get his attention. Something isn’t right. His eyelids open. He lets out a shriek.

“BOOTS! What are you _doing_?” He fairly levitates off the bed, horrified embarrassment, or perhaps embarrassed horror, or both, lending him wings. 

Oh dear god. Oh dear god. He was about to be jerked off by his cat! Sean is close to hyperventilating and passing out again. All those times he’d thought Boots indifferent to his naked body—had he been mistaken? Did she… Oh dear god. Oh dear god.

He can hardly bring himself to look at Boots, but he does. It is possibly the bravest thing he has ever done.

He gapes.

Boots is intently stalking the line of light across the bed, and batting at the twinkling dots with her cute little white front paws. She isn’t paying the slightest attention whatsoever to Sean, but is immersed in her game of cat-and-mouse.

Intense relief floods over Sean, along with an equally intense flood of the most agonizing embarrassment he’s ever felt (which is definitely saying something since agonizing embarrassment is a specialty of his). Boots had just been doing what cats do, stalking and pouncing, and he’d actually thought for a moment… Oh dear god. He covers his face with his hands and wishes the neatly vacuumed beige carpet with its fibers all pointing in the same direction would open up and swallow him whole.

Blue balls and all. Speaking of which…

“Boots, I’m sorry,” Sean says, and hustling to the bed, scoops her up and carries her to the door. He sets her down outside. “But if, erm, certain things don’t happen and soon, I’m going to end up in the emergency room with, erm… well, you don’t want to know.”

“Meow?” Boots gazes up at him inquiringly.

“Really, you don’t want to know. Trust me. Now run along, Boots, and, erm, we’ll just pretend none of this ever happened.” Sean closes the door firmly in her adorable squashed-in nose, too desperate to feel guilty for shutting her out (something that under normal circumstances, he would never, ever do, for Boots, just like him, is very sensitive to slights). 

He scurries back to the bed, moving rather like a crab due to the exigencies of his condition. In the midst of the loops and curlicues and zigzags and spirals a giant question mark has appeared. ‘Where the fuck are you? What happened?’ that question mark demands, but while Elijah is well used to the disasters that punctuate Sean’s life like commas and sometimes full stops, even he won’t believe this one, Sean thinks. He isn’t about to try to explain it in pictograms, either, so Sean simply draws a smiley face inside the question mark to indicate his presence, and resumes his former position.

A state of Mutsugoto Zen is unquestionably out of reach now, but other things are not. And as he grasps that other thing that isn’t out of reach, Sean keeps his eyes wide open and doesn’t so much as blink until it’s all over. 

In the aftermath, Sean does close his eyes. He pictures Elijah as he has seen him so many times in the past, a smug un-angelic post-coital smile curving his rosy lips, and his blue eyes glowing with sleepy satisfaction. ‘Fuck, Seanie, that was amazing,’ he’ll be saying, even though Sean isn’t there to hear him. And (the Boots Debacle aside, of course) it _had_ been amazing. Elijah had been right: drawing in light on each other’s bodies was beautiful.

A tingling sensation rouses Sean. He opens his eyes and looks down to see the familiar white line and twinkling lavender, pink and blue dots on his chest. It seems Elijah isn’t quite done using Sean’s body as his canvas. But what he is drawing now? Sean wonders. Sudden tears fill his eyes as he realizes what it is.

It’s a heart. Elijah is drawing a heart. 

“Oh Elijah,” Sean whispers in a husky voice. He moves his right hand to his chest, and carefully traces the outline of Elijah’s heart with his ring. The lines shimmer, merge and turn heart’s blood red. Two have become one. The experiment is, against all odds, a success.

~~~

“So what was that all about, Sean?” Elijah asks later. “I was just getting ready to come when you disappeared on me, you fucker. Don’t think that smiley face is going to suffice as an explanation.”

Sean briefly contemplates prevaricating, but he is the world’s worst liar, and Elijah will know at once that he isn’t telling the truth. Humiliating as it is, he’s going to have to confess.

His reward is at least ten minutes’ worth of Elijah’s heavenly choirs-of-angels-sitting-on-fluffy-clouds-singing-and-strumming-golden-harps giggle, interspersed with ‘Oh _Sean_ ’s. When Elijah finally giggles to a halt, he says, “Seanie, promise me something, will you?”

“Anything,” Sean vows fervently. (Elijah’s giggle has that effect on him.)

“Promise me that, whatever happens, you won’t ever change, okay?” 

It’s a promise that is easy to make. Sean is very sure that, even if he wanted to change, Fate would never allow it. Hugging trees naked in the rain can only help so much, after all.

~~~

Sean paces anxiously back and forth outside the International arrivals area. He has been pacing anxiously back and forth for more than an hour. Elijah’s plane from Edinburgh has safely landed, removing one rampant fear from his long list, and Elijah has called to let him know he’s safely landed with the plane, removing another (the most rampant of all). There is nothing to be anxious about, he tells himself, but Elijah does have to clear Customs, and everyone knows how unreasonable and arbitrary Customs officials can be. They might decide to detain Elijah just for the fun of it. Sean is prepared, however, with a list of potentially useful phone numbers for everyone from his attorney to the President of the United States. No one is going to mess with his Elijah.

In the end, there’s no reason to appeal to the President to intercede on Elijah’s behalf. Just when Sean is certain that the worst has happened, for a stream of arriving passengers passes through the doors without a sign of his angelic ex-garbageman among them, Elijah appears, pulling his suitcase-on-wheels behind him.

“Elijah!” Sean shouts and begins to run. It’s just like in a movie. Sean is running in slow motion across a sunny meadow filled with wildflowers (no ragweed, because it makes him sneeze), colorful songbirds and butterflies, and frolicking lambs and baby deer. Elijah is running toward him in slow motion, too, a joyous smile on his beloved face. They are both wearing gauzy shirts (his white, Elijah’s blue) with bouffant sleeves that billow in the soft breeze. Music swells up, the sort of music that tells you right away that something wonderful is about to occur. And so it does, for they meet in the center of the meadow and passionately embrace, and Sean is certain that this time Elijah isn’t saying, ‘Wherever you are right now, that’s not us’, but inhabits the fantasy with him.

“Geez, get a room, would you?” someone pointedly remarks, and the sunny meadow vanishes. But with Elijah’s firm body plastered against his and his hungry mouth fastened to Sean’s, Sean can’t really bring himself to mind. Sunny meadow, crowded airport terminal, it’s all one to him.

After an eternity or ten, Sean lowers Elijah to the ground (how _did_ his legs get wrapped around Sean’s waist?) and they smile goofily at each other. 

“I have a surprise for you, Elijah,” Sean says, unable to wait a moment longer to show him.

“Right here in the middle of the International arrivals terminal?” Elijah teases, a wicked sparkle in his blue eyes, and Sean blushes. 

“Elijah!” he exclaims. “It’s not _that_ kind of surprise.” 

“Well, what kind is it?” Elijah asks eagerly. “Fuck, I love surprises, Sean.”

For answer, Sean removes the Mephisto on his right foot and tugs down his sock (he doesn’t dare remove it all the way, lest his bare sole touch the no doubt germ-laden terminal floor). “I got a tattoo,” he says proudly, pointing to a small dark blue mark just beneath his anklebone. “It’s a pair of angel wings, because you’re my angel.”

Elijah’s eyes widen and he stares in awestruck amazement. “You got a _tattoo_? Oh Sean!” Tears fill his eyes. “Oh sweetie, how did you ever, well, handle the pain? Not to mention find a parlor that was sanitary enough for you.”

Elijah knows him so well. 

“It wasn’t easy,” Sean admits. “I must have visited a dozen places before I found one that was acceptable, and my brother went with me to, erm, hold my hand. It wasn’t so bad,” he lies. 

(Actually, it had been more of a full-body wrestling hold, after the first stroke of the tattoo needle had opened Sean’s eyes to exactly how painful the experience was going to be. But that will remain their little secret. At least, Sean hopes his brother will keep it a secret, especially his initial blood-curdling shriek, not to mention the reaction of the tattoo artist when Sean had inquired whether guys ever got tattoos on their dicks.)

“You are so incredibly brave, Sean,” Elijah breathes, and hugs him close. “I love your tattoo. It’s the best surprise ever.”

“Really?” Sean beams as he tugs up his sock and replaces his shoe. Every second of excruciating agony had been worth it. Elijah loves his tattoo.

“Really. And now _I_ have a surprise for _you_.” Elijah tugs the hem of his tee shirt up and the waistband of his jeans down to uncover the skin by his right hip. “I got a tattoo, too.” He grins. “See? It says ‘Seanie’. Harry, the lead singer for ‘Nails on a Blackboard’, took me to the parlor where he gets all his done.”

“Oh Elijah!” Sean chokes up with emotion at this evidence of Elijah’s love for him (even while suppressing an unreasoning jealousy that Harry had been present for the event and exposed to Elijah’s bare abdomen for some unspecified period of time). Then he bends down to examine the tattoo, which is written in a tasteful, elegant script. Like his tattoo, it is still in the process of healing, and that perfect satin skin appears slightly reddish. “I hope you won’t get an infection,” he says worriedly. “Have you been taking care of it? Applying antibiotic ointment? Letting it get plenty of air?”

Elijah tucks his shirt back into his jeans, and takes Sean firmly by the arm. “Yes, yes, and yes,” he assures him, and starts steering him toward the exit, his suitcase-on-wheels clattering behind them. “Now tell me about the election, Mr. Wine Club President. I want to hear every detail.”

It is the perfect distraction, as Elijah has known it will be, and Sean, still basking in the post-election glow, does. Floating on that cloud of bliss reserved for lovers reunited, they head toward the parking lot, with Sean talking a mile a minute, and then drive back to their happy home, their adored (if occasionally _de trop_ ) cat, and the velvet-lined handcuffs that lie waiting on the bedside table.

Sean has one more surprise in store for his angelic ex-garbageman.

~end~


End file.
